And Sheweth Him All the Kingdoms of the World
by Esteliel
Summary: "He hungers. It is not a physical thing – or rather, it is a physical thing imposed upon one who has stripped off the physical, who handed in the body with all its cravings and needs at the same time as he handed in his resignation to that great superior." - Not everything is over after Javert commits suicide. There are yet more choices for him to make.


Time has lost its meaning. He hungers. It is not a physical thing – or rather, it is a physical thing imposed upon one who has stripped off the physical, who handed in the body with all its cravings and needs at the same time as he handed in his resignation to that great superior. Now, he _is_, and yet he is not. His mind rebels at the thought: to be without body, to stretch out into the infinite, to be as thin as sunlight, as wide as the darkness between the stars – that is unthinkable, and so his thoughts cling to that shape that was once home, that body that _was_, and whether it _is_ or _is not_ is unimportant.

Reality is a strange concept. He thinks that he must have a body, and so, somehow, his thoughts find themselves contained in that familiar, tall shape, curling with quiet relief into cells, veins, atoms that _exist_, no matter whether they exist only in his mind. It is his mind that _is_, after all.

Hunger gnaws at him. At first, he cataloged the ache with curiosity. After he had stripped off the physical, _ache_ was new; then his mind remembered and greeted _pain_ like an old friend, embracing it with something close to joy for the sheer pleasure of knowing _sensation_. Now, it is torment. Emptiness bites at where his stomach should be, pangs of a desperate craving for nourishment. On his left, there kneels a man. On his right, there kneels another. Chains bind them together; the heavy weight of iron is another distant memory that at first he greets with relief at its familiarity, then tries to bear as it goes on, then grits his teeth against, until at last, tears run down his gaunt, dirty cheeks at the way the shackles rub against the sores on his foot with every breath he takes.

Boots patrol before them. He knows those boots. The leather is dark, spotless, polished to a cruel, merciless shine: perfection in a place where for men in chains, nothing but dirt and misery is achievable. He cannot look up; he does not have the strength for it.

When have they last been fed? He cannot remember it. How long has he been here? That memory too is gone. For which crime have they chained him? He does not know.

He thirsts. His tongue is so dry and heavy in his mouth that he cannot even call out. He barely has enough strength to keep on his knees. How long have they starved him like this? No matter what crime he committed, certainly no man deserves this wretchedness where hunger leeches all feeling from a man until all that is left is animal need.

The man to his right turns. He, too, is gaunt and starved, but his shoulders are broad, his body is strong. Starvation has reduced him to sinew and muscle. Here, in this place where they are all animals, this man is the stronger beast, Javert knows, and shudders when those hands reach out for him.

They come to rest on his own. They are heavy and warm. How strange to be touched, he thinks, and looks at the hands that envelop his own. Strong hands, yet dirty, wounded by a thousand scrapes and bruises. And still, they are human hands, and something wakes in him that dimly remembers human touch. The hunger this memory brings with it is as painful as the hunger that gnaws at his stomach.

"Javert," the starved man says, and his voice is little more than a rough croak. "Javert, I am hungry. Do you not remember me, your friend Jean Valjean? I am innocent! You know I do not deserve this!"

Javert nods, because that is true. No man deserves this.

"Javert, I am starving! Remember me, your friend Valjean! I spared your life! Give me food, Javert!" the man pleads, and again something within Javert moves, a long-withered root unfurling and burying deeper into infertile soil in the hopeless search for water.

When he finally manages to speak, it hurts. Almost it scares him, this sensation of creating sound. "I... I have no..." he manages to say. His voice is rough, like the groan of a tree felled by the wind.

"Javert! I am so hungry," the man says, and now his words are little more than a sigh, and the disappointment in those sad eyes brings with it a pain that is entirely new and burns like fire in the withered dead wood inside him. "Please, I need food. Say the word, and these stones will be bread. You know it to be so. You see how hungry I am. You know how they starve us here. If you do, all will be forgiven."

The mire in which he kneels is so cold is sucks all the warmth out of his bones, leaving him filled with a hollow emptiness. He looks at the stones before them. They, like his body, are created of matter; this matter, too, released from its form, would spread thin, atom after atom trailing through the darkness like stars circling distant suns. Yes. These stones could be bread. It would be easy, to think them _bread_, to ease this pain within his stomach, to ease this man's hunger as well...

"Javert," the man groans, and there is a sharp eagerness in his eyes all of a sudden. "Please, Javert. Feed yourself. Feed me. I am so hungry. My forgiveness, my gratitude, anything you desire, I swear you shall have it!"

Javert tears his yes away from the stones, away from the man to his right who looks so familiar, who frightens him so. The boots stop before him.

"Say the word, and these stones will be bread," a voice says. It is a familiar voice, a voice as cold as iron and the mud in which they kneel, wearing the heavy coat of injustice clad in the words of the law, armored in irreproachability instead of justice. "You know it to be so, Javert. Say the word. Feed yourself; feed him."

He knows that voice well. It is his own.

Pain still tears at this emptiness inside him as he looks up at last, meeting the eyes that are his own, and dreadful in their lack of empathy.

"Prisoners, on arriving after examination, take off their shoes and stand barefoot on the flagstones while they are being searched," he says. His voice is still rough, soft from disuse, but there is a great, terrible attention on him, and his soul, a naked little thing that is all raw nerve flayed of all skin, cringes and cowers before that empty dreadfulness. He continues. He does not know why. The ache of hunger that racks his body is unbearable, and yet, he realizes as he trembles before that darkness that stands before him in polished boots, this absence of mercy is a pain more terrible still.

He cannot bear it. Such things cannot be. The body can go hungry; his soul has been starved too long to ever be content with physical nourishment again. "Many of them cough on their return to prison. This entails hospital expenses."

* * *

He stands upon the parapet. Below him, the dark waters of the Seine rush past, roaring rapids that promise quick forgetfulness. There is a man beside him. He knows his form well. The man stands by his side, and a part of Javert wishes he would reach out for his hand, pull him close, offer all the meaningless gestures of consolation that Javert went without of his own volition for so very long. Now, even the thought of this man offering such a thing to him would be enough to make him weep, make him step down and surrender himself to an embrace, and allow the warmth of strong arms to chain him to a life and a conscience that frightens him still.

Below, there is nothing but the perpetual roar of the Seine. Something within him feels the same rush of waters, as if the black stream rises and falls in his veins like the tide of his heart.

"It is so easy. One small step," the man says. His figure is so familiar. This tide that moves his heart rises until it swallows every thought and every emotion, save for this empty, aching regret that pulls him towards the man's broad figure. Even now, this pull does not release him. Even now, he is drawn towards him like a bird lost at sea that catches that first glimpse of the shore.

The man turns and smiles at him. There is a light in his eyes that warms him, here in the deepest darkness. Javert waits for what he knows in his heart will surely follow: a hand stretched out to pull him away from the parapet to rest instead against this man's chest, a heart that beats against his own in reassurance, this man's warm hand curved against his nape to keep him close and safe, and allow him to breathe in human warmth instead of the cold darkness that waits below.

Instead, the man turns away from him to look down at the water. "It is just one step, Javert. Go. You know there is no reason to remain here. Hand in your resignation. How can you serve under such a superior? You know what I have done, Javert. I have stolen. I have broken parole. I have lied, again and again. Think of how I reprimanded you in Montreuil in front of your men, and over the matter of a woman of the town! And just think, Javert, this great superior raises me above you! Can you serve under such a superior? Go, Javert. Go, hand in your papers, wash your hands of me and _Him_ with just one simple step."

Javert hesitates. Within him, he once more feels the unbearable torment of seeing two paths open up. The road he has walked all of his life, the straight, paved road of the law, is revealed as a twisted thing that leads through shadow and swamps, and it is this man next to him, the convict, the man who ran from the law and walks unseen in the dark, who has suddenly been revealed to him in a ray of light, as if wherever he treads, the trees and thorns retreat and the clouds disperse so that he can shine light into the deepest darkness.

"Jean Valjean," he says. The words are hesitant, but as he speaks them, he knows them to be true – that is the name of this puzzling torment, this man of light, this mystery.

The man smiles. The ache of the emptiness within Javert is fierce. Will this man not smile for him? Will he not reach out a hand, he who reached out to every sinner, to beggars and gamins and women of the town?

"One step, Javert, and it is all over. Come. You know in your heart that this is how it must be."

Javert looks at the familiar face. It is framed by soft, white locks; for one moment, he imagines reaching out to touch, to know that softness, to have this man's scent cling to his fingers.

He would bury himself in his goodness, if he could. It is a weakness, he thinks, this need for salvation. Should he, who has been so hard all of his life, show forgiveness only to himself at last? He does not deserve mercy. He does not deserve forgiveness. And now this man too, who once breathed grace with every word, with every gesture, throws back his own damnation at him.

"Take that final step, Javert. End it," Valjean says, and Javert feels the darkness below rise to swallow him until every heartbeat is despair. The rapids below roar his name; they will grind down his body and drink his blood and at last he will flow forever in this neverending darkness, and everything will be over, and the roar of this raw, new conscience which he has never wanted will be stripped from him and torn away by the current so that in the end, there will be nothing but the roar of the water without and the dead silence within, eternal, endless.

"It is what you deserve," the man says, and Javert breathes deeply, every fiber, every atom of his body a raw nerve, alive and aflame with pain from the lightning strike that has awoken this pitiful soul curled within him from its long dormancy.

He steps forward. The river is very loud beneath him. He spreads his arms.

Then he moves to embrace this man beside him, and instead of the sweet grace this man's light has always promised, he only finds smoke and bitter ashes and chilling darkness. He thinks he does not mind as his conscience scatters away again. For a moment, it makes the memory of the light in his eyes shine all the brighter.

* * *

Below him spreads the landscape of Paris: shadowed ravines between tall houses leaning against each other, here and there the rise of church spires and towers. Here is the green of the Luxembourg, there the Jardin des Plantes, and between spreads a kingdom of rooftops.

The man is by his side again. He reaches out for his hand, and Javert lets him. It is curious: his hand is warm, and for one moment, Javert contemplates curling his fingers around that hand, to ground himself in physicality, in touch, to wrap himself in existence through this man's warmth. He looks at the hand that holds his own for a long moment; when he looks up, the rooftops of Paris are gone. Instead, walls have arisen around them. Sunlight falls in through a window. There is dust in the air. There is a desk strewn with paper, and a chair that is well used and neither as comfortable nor as ornate as would befit the owner of a factory, or the mayor of the town.

The man is still holding his hand, but there is a different strength in his grip now. He can not call it youthful – there is some gray in the man's hair already, after all – but it does little more than emphasize the easy strength with which this body moves. The strength of muscle is barely hidden by the man's diffidence, or by the way he hunches in on himself a little whenever he is forced to speak to another, the way the eyes that shine with gentleness for every living being are shadowed by fear whenever they come to rest on Javert.

Today, those eyes smile at him. Today, his hand is held safe and warm in this man's hand. _Valjean,_ he thinks, and Valjean steps closer, and his other comes to rest, very gently, against Javert's cheek, as though he were an animal Valjean is afraid will escape at a hasty gesture.

Today, that warm palm cups his cheek, and this new heart within him contracts again and again. Every heartbeat is pain as he is forced to exist, to breathe, to _feel_ when Valjean – _Madeleine,_ something within whispers seductively – steps closer, when at last he can feel a heart beating against his own, feel warm breath against his lips.

"Stay, Javert," Madeleine says very gently. There is such infinite patience in his eyes. Numbly, Javert wonders at himself. How is it that he watched this man for so long and yet could not see?

"Stay here with me. You know the good I could do were I to remain. Now think of the good you could do here with me. Think, Javert, of the schools we could build, the hospital beds, the women and men earning their life with honest labor."

Javert remains silent. Does he tremble? He cannot say, but something within him is grateful for the man's warmth when he moves closer, when that hand moves into his hair with the gentleness he has not known since the touch of the mother he has long forgotten.

"Think, too, Javert," Madeleine says softly, his lips brushing Javert's as he talks, "of how we would know each other; think of wine shared, of quiet evenings, of walks through the fields. Think of how it will feel to take my hand. Think of how happy I shall be to kiss your fingers, your lips, your hair. Think of how betimes, I will rest against you at night, and how warm you will be, and how I will smile at you when you wake in the morning, and there will be fog outside and everything will be quiet as we share a cup of tea before the sun rises."

It is cold, now; when he presses a hand against the window, his fingertips ache. Outside, everything is lost in a world of shifting, moving fog. He cannot even see the hedge that surrounds Madeleine's house.

It is cold. His skin breaks out into goosebumps. He is naked; he has only just risen from bed. Then a blanket is wrapped around him, and Madeleine presses himself against his back. A kiss is pressed to his nape, then Madeleine yawns, his voice still rough with sleep when he speaks.

"Can I not tempt you back to bed for an hour?" Madeleine asks, his hand slowly stroking up and down Javert's arm. Madeleine's head rests on his shoulder; he realizes, dimly, that Madeleine has not shaved yet, and his cheek is rough against his own. For a moment, as Madeleine is content to rest against him in quiet happiness, he thinks of that feeling of warm water and foamy soap and the quiet, focused pleasure of shaving Madeleine, of doing such a thing for him; something within him warms at the memory of that scene, this calm domesticity they have shared between them countless times. He will brush his lips against Madeleine's clean-shaven face afterward; he thinks of how Madeleine's eyes will be full of warmth as they meet in his office later that day, pretending they do not share anything but work between them, of coming back to his home in the evening, when it is dark and cold outside, and of warming their hands on cups of steaming tea, and then, later, of warming their hands on heating skin...

"And is that not right?" Valjean asks gently, and his eyes too are gentle, and warm, and Javert wants to weep for this thing that is between them, woven into the atoms of his being as though memory were a poison that this man can inject into his veins to spread like a drop of black ink in a bowl of water.

"And is that not _good_? And would you not have happiness, and goodness, and learn from these very hands how to be gentle, and how to love, and how to fill yourself with the warmth of all these things that should have been yours? That will be yours?"

Valjean's hand curls against his nape, and a shudder runs through Javert at these memories-that-aren't that make his heart beat in his chest with aching physicality. "You have handed in your resignation to one superior," Valjean says, and his thumb strokes against Javert's sideburns, then down to press gently against the corner of his mouth. "And that was good, and right, for that was a superior you could not serve. Serve another superior, Javert. It is very easy, after all. What does it matter, the face of the king that is pressed into the coin? Such things are above men like you. A superior may come and go, a name may change, but the office remains. The duty. And now you have a chance to fulfill your duty, Javert. Take up your duty once more. Serve beneath a different superior. Take your just reward; all that should have been yours, all that should have been his is offered to you now. Will you not take it?"

Javert looks at him. Within, he can still feel the curl of warmth awoken by the memories of moments they have shared – moments they _will_ share. Time is an abstract concept, as are the atoms that create this mortal shell his soul curls within. To remember a past event, to remember a future event, to live the memory that was and that will be: all of that is the same, created by the fleeting, eternal fall of the sands of time, and he knows that with his answer, this man could turn the hourglass, and turn it again, and again, and he would live and breathe and love within that glass prison, and it would be life enough that he could never want anything else.

He smiles at Valjean who is not Valjean. How strange, and how right, that the devil should come to him in the guise of a saint, he thinks, and still he yearns to reach out and clasp his hand and pretend.

"I could not serve that superior, but the fault was my own," he says, and with that feels atoms fly apart, suddenly released from the gravity of his soul. It is a pain unlike anything he has ever known; his soul, this raw, naked thing, shudders and convulses as it is torn free from its shell again.

_I could not serve, but neither will I rebel. To be not, forever, will serve me well. It is punishment enough._

Everything is silence then. Javert, for that is still his name, he thinks, his consciousness curling and unfurling and threading carefully, curiously through quiet emptiness, contemplates once more what was offered to him. If he still had a heart, it would throb in painful regret. Instead, it is simple mournfulness that shudders through the lightless nothing as he wistfully remembers that hand he never pressed.

_And he would not want punishment for me. He would not offer temptation. He would simply offer forgiveness. And I think... I think this time I would accept._

He rests. He sleeps. His thoughts curl slowly, sleepily, and then, at last, he wakes.

He thinks he has heard someone call his name.

There is light now; when he moves towards it, it grows brighter, although it is never enough to scald or blind. It is a gentle light; he feels drawn towards its center until he thinks that maybe, he is simply but one small atom pulled towards a star, that now, he, too, shall pass and become part of this great, overwhelming thing, and he is not frightened. Instead, he is filled with curiosity. There is something familiar to the sentiment that spreads through him; there is the sound of crying, and he tastes grief and pain and terrible loss as he passes through it like a mist. But these things do not touch him now, for here, at last, he can see what stands at the heart of that light. It is compassion, grace, love, forgiveness, wrapped into the black cloth of bone-deep weariness.

Javert waits, patient now. Even beneath that veil of grief and tiredness, the light warms him. At last, the man turns towards him, and the veil slips away, and he beholds that soul in all its innate nakedness and glory. He holds out his hand; he can see the shadow of great wings travel across that beloved soul, and when their hands touch, he feels it within himself like a caress.

Then Valjean takes his hand, and the sweetness of his warmth fills him like breath, and when they come together in an embrace at last, there is no more grief, no more regret.

Time has lost its meaning.


End file.
